–a glossary for Austrian medical officers attending to the needs of Hungarian soldiers ignorant of German, with such phrases as:
Hazafias magyarok! Mindebben mindannyian együtt vagyunk!
Patriotic Magyars, we are all in this together!
Nem beteg, a baj az a bátorság hiánya!
He is not sick, his disease is no bravery.
Persze hogy viszket Somogyi őrmester, nem kellett volna olyan szoknyapecérnek lenni!
Of course it itches, Sergeant Somogyi, you were out of control.
–a page on abdominal surgery, which concluded, after consideration of the opinions of various world-famous experts and some statistical discussion—abdominal wounds generally exceed 60 percent mortality despite intervention—that abdominal surgery should not be done.
He wrote to his mother again, this time asking her to send textbooks on wound care and basic first-aid techniques.
Briefly, he was appointed to a delousing detail, to prevent outbreaks of typhus among eastern refugees, mostly Jewish families fleeing attacks on their villages. The camp was set up in a cattle market, south of the city. It was miserable. A deep antagonism had developed between the medical personnel and the refugees, the most religious of whom resisted shaving their hair. The camp director was a former headmaster of a primary school, a viperous man, angry that the army was wasting Austrians to defend Poles and Jews. To Lucius, he said he was happy to have the company of another man of science, and in the evenings he liked to lecture him on his theories of heredity and the natural uncleanliness of certain races. Not once did Lucius see the camp director try to explain to his wards why they were rounded up and shorn, their ritual clothes taken from them for steaming. When at last Lucius grew sick with watching sanitary personnel tear off the hats and kaftans, he went alone to one of the rabbis and tried to explain to him why the measures needed to be taken. But the old man wouldn’t listen. He kept repeating how his people were being treated like animals. There had been no cases of typhus yet; why were they the only ones being harassed? Lucius tried to explain the transmission cycle of typhus to him, that it took time for the disease to develop, that rats and fleas were present, and already they had outbreaks in other camps. “What is it caused by?” the man asked, and Lucius had to answer, “We… I mean science… doesn’t know. Something unseen, a bacillus, a virus.”
“So you are burning our clothes for something unseen,” said the rabbi, shaking his head. “For a disease which has not been found.”
In January, he received news of his fifth redeployment, to a small village in the Galician Carpathians called Lemnowice. On the map it sat in a narrow valley, on the northern slope of the mountains, a finger’s-breadth from Uzhok Pass on the Hungarian border.
Uzhok, thought Lucius, a memory stirring. Uzhok: of course. For it was there a famous meteor had lit the sky two weeks before his father was shot in battle, an augury that had become part of family lore.
The Uzhok meteorite had been collected and brought back to the Natural History Museum in Vienna; a painting on the wall illustrated the event. Yes, he remembered this… he used to go there with his father. It was perhaps his only memory of sharing anything that didn’t have to do with the lancers, although, in a roundabout way (meteor-bullet-hip), it did.
But he couldn’t get there from Kraków—the war was in the way. He would have to travel to Budapest, they told him, and from there on to Debrecen, where he would board yet another train.
Given his disappointments, he didn’t believe it. He heard nothing for the next four days. But then, back in Vienna, in the Trains Division of the Headquarters of the Imperial and Royal Army, a Second-Level Clerk rose from his desk and, carrying a ledger, made his way to the corresponding Second-Level Clerk in the Medical Division, two flights down, returning with an order bearing a double-headed eagle stamp, which he presented to the First-Level Clerk in Trains for another stamp, then walked down four flights of stairs and out the building and through the snow to the Ad Hoc Office for the Eastern Theatre, where the order with both stamps was delivered to a corresponding Second-Level Clerk in the Transportation Division, who entered the name into a ledger, applied his own stamp, returned the order, wrote out a second order, and sent it down to the Head Clerk for Trains, in the Medical Division, Eastern Theatre, who, after a lunch of stale rye and egg sprinkled so heavily with paprika that it would stain the oily fingerprints he left in the margins of the page, rose, and with the ledger tucked inside his coat, went outside, stopping briefly to appreciate the beauty of the falling snow on a pensive putto above a doorway and on the glistening rooftops, before he crossed the boulevard to the military post office.
The route to Budapest passed back through Vienna. There, just across the Inner City from his home, Lucius only had time to buy a pickle from a station vendor before he had to board again. Three days later he was in the barracks in Debrecen, when he received the orders that he would take a final train to a place he had never heard of, called Nagybocskó, beyond another place he’d never heard of, called Máramarossziget, where he would be met by an escort from the hussars.
An escort from the hussars. An image then, of standing with his father in their ballroom, the great wings fluttering above their heads. Near Máramarossziget. He said the word slowly, like a child pronouncing the secret name of a fabled land.
To Feuermann, he wrote, At last.
The night before his departure, distracted by anticipation, Lucius was crossing the market square when a child dashed from a carriage and with a squeal ran straight into his legs. The street was slick with ice. He took a step forward to steady himself, caught his saber between his legs, and tripped, hearing his wrist snap when he reached out to break his fall.
For a moment he lay on the ice, clutching his arm. He waited for help, but the street was empty. Like a ghost, the child was gone, likely swept up by a mother afraid of the punishment for knocking down an Austrian officer.
Back in his quarters, he removed his greatcoat and undid the buttons of the cuff. The standard procedure would have been to get an X-ray, but he was already certain what had happened: a Colles’ fracture of the carpal extremity of the radius, the bone displaced dorsally, the sharp edge now palpable. Already it was so swollen that he had trouble opening the cuff. He cursed, furious at the child and his own incaution. He still had feeling in his fingers—at least there’d been no injury to the nerve. But the fracture would need to be reduced.
It would be safest just to report to the hospital, he knew. But he also knew that if he did so, there was no way he would be sent on to the front.
It could have been a joke. What does the Imperial and Royal Army call a one-handed medical student with no clinical experience?
Doctor.
He pulled lightly on his wrist, thinking that if he could bear it, he might reduce the fracture himself. But the pain was too great, and the muscle was in spasm. His will failed him. He needed help from someone strong.
He left the barracks and wandered toward town. He hoped to find a local doctor; even a veterinarian might do. But most of the signs were in Hungarian, and he couldn’t understand them. At last he saw the word Kovács, above a painted anvil—Blacksmith. Knocking on the door, he was met by a woman with a coat thrown over a nightgown. She stared at him suspiciously. In German she said, “We are full. No more billets. Already sleeping on the floor.”